My stomach ached as he tore open old scars, making new ones. And by the time my father was satisfied, a proud smile tugging at the corners of his mouth, I wanted to punch him in his smug fucking face. If he wasn’t one of the most powerful men in the world, I would have run from him. I would have stolen enough cash to leave this stupid town and never come back.
But I would never leave Luca. I owed him for enduring most of my punishments. Whatever deal he had made with mother was unbreakable in his mind, and so I vowed to never step out of line after that day. For Luca, I promised to never cross my father. It was the least I owed him for coming to my rescue.
My father rubbed his hand over his face, then he stormed away from us as if the room were on fire. I handed Luca his shirt. He winced as the fabric molded to his back, clinging to his open cuts.
“I’ll do whatever he wants,” I said. “You won’t have to take another punishment for me.”
Luca yanked his suit jacket out of my hand and slipped it on without a word. He stared at me for a long, hard moment, his lips parting. Then he closed his mouth and ran a hand through his black hair. A moment of silence passed between us before he spoke.
“There will come a day when I need something from you,” Luca said in a hushed tone. “Something you won’t want to give me, but you will do it anyway.”
“Like what?”
He shrugged. “You’ll know when the day comes.”
After that day, my father had the staff cover the furniture and easels with tarps. Then they locked the door and threw away the key. No one had entered the room again until Luca brought Alex to the house to see my mother’s fresco. She was the first person to step foot inside the room in close to ten years.
My eyes snapped open from the nightmare, my heart racing. I thought about Luca and what he had done for me so many times over the years. When Carl Wellington offered Alex a choice between us, I understood what Luca had meant that day in my mother’s studio.
That was the day.
The second he glanced across the room at me, shooting daggers in my direction, I felt it deep in my bones. I had to gracefully bow out of the contest, but Luca would never treat her right if I handed Alex to him on a silver platter. So I pushed him to the limit, made him think I would steal Alex. Eventually, he would come to terms with his feelings for her. Everyone knew how much he cared about her, even if he had yet to understand the true extent of his love for our queen.
I rolled onto my side, expecting to see Alex in the bed beside me. Except she was gone. I shot up from the mattress, scanning the dark room. The patio doors were still locked, the ensuite bathroom empty. There wasn’t a single sound in the room. I slid off the mattress, slipped into my pants and shoes, and stepped into the hallway.
On the nights I slept in her bed, I didn’t have a guard on duty. She’d never woken up in the middle of the night and left the room, so I had no reason to think we’d need the extra security.
I checked the other rooms on this floor, skipping over Bastian and Damian’s bedrooms. Maybe she went downstairs for food. It wasn’t uncommon for her to wake up and ask me to get her a sweat tea or toast with raspberry jam.
I descended the stairs to the first floor, following the sound of the grand piano traveling down the long tiled hallway. Bash had a habit of visiting the great hall when he couldn’t sleep. The house was so big none of us could hear him play from the upper floors.
A few times, I’d found Kali on top of the piano with her legs spread as he played for her. Once I’d even found them fucking on top of it. Considering it was a Steinway & Sons Fibonacci, Bash knew better. If my father had ever caught them disgracing a concert piano valued at over two million dollars, he would have killed them.
Based on his song choice, I assumed Kali wasn’t here tonight. He was playing “Gymnopédie No. 1” by Erik Satie, which was relaxing but also kind of depressing. All of us dealt with our anger in different ways. Bash enjoyed blood play and piano music, a strange combination. Before his parents’ tragic deaths, Bash was a prodigy pianist. He’d even won awards for his original compositions.
Relief washed over me as I approached the great hall. Alex stood outside the room with her back against the wall and her eyes closed, listening to Bash’s sad song. She must have heard my shoes smack the tiled floor because she turned her head, her gaze on me.